The invention relates to a dual purpose removable cassette for a reproducing apparatus. The invention also comprises a reproducing apparatus employing such a cassette for copying extra long documents. The cassette is adapted to support both a supply of copy sheet material in the form of a fan-fold web as well as an extra long document in either a coiled form or a fan-fold web form.
Reproducing apparatus are known in the art which are capable of handling both web-type originals or documents and web-type copy sheets. An example of such a system is that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,076,392, to Cerasani et al.
Reproducing apparatuses including systems for forming copy images on a web-type copy sheet in fan-fold form are also known in the art as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,973,846, to Sullivan et al.
Reproducing apparatuses for imaging fan-fold type original documents are known as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,804,514 to Jasinski. Computer printers also form printed images on fan-fold web-type sheet material. One such system, the IBM 3800 computer printer, uses a xerographic process for printing on such a fan-fold web.
Various copying machines such as the Xerox 3100 LDC copier are known in the art which are capable of copying long originals on equally long copy sheets. Conventionally, the length of the copy sheet is limited by the length of a removable cassette used to supply it to the image transfer station. A machine of this general type is exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,877,804 to Hoppner.
It is known that with a Xerox 3100 LDC copier it is possible to manually handle copy sheets which exceed the length of a cassette fed sheet in order to copy extra long documents many feet in length. This manual handling approach has been accomplished by inserting the lead edge of an extra long copy sheet into the cassette so that it may be fed to the image transfer station. Similarly, the extra long document is inserted in the document feeding head. The copy sheet and document are then fed in synchronism to form the extra long copy.
As noted above, the use of a copy sheet cassette is well known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 3,767,187 to Mahler is illustrative of such a removable cassette which can be employed in a machine such as the Xerox 3100 LDC copier. In the Xerox 3100 LDC copier, multiple cassettes are provided including a longer cassette for handling longer copy sheets. However, the essential features of the cassette shown in this patent are shared by the extra long paper cassette.
Many documents or originals which are generated are of an extra long character. For example, strip chart recorders often generate documents many feet in length. Reproduction of such document has been extremely difficult in the past even when carried out by the manual handling approach described above with reference to the Xerox 3100 copier.